The Girl Behind The Make-Up
by tvfan69
Summary: On a mission gone south Harley and Deadshot find themselves sitting around and waiting to die, unless someone actually plans on rescuing them. Deadshot decides to ask Harley a personal question, and she shows him a side of her that is rarely seen.


This day was not turning out as plan.

Although to be fair, Floyd Lawton had figured that out when he first woke up to the prison guards drugging and hauling his ass out of his cell. It turned out to be another Suicide Squad mission; those were getting more and more frequent lately. He didn't mind it though, not ever since they worked a deal with Waller so that every assignment she sent them on would, depending on the severity, earn them anywhere between five and seven years off their sentences. It wasn't much, but with Waller calling on them what seemed like once every other month it was going to start adding up. Today the mission was worth six years, assuming they survive. Going into it Lawton hadn't suspected he'd find himself in a situation he couldn't escape, but he had.

He and Harley had gotten themselves locked on the inside of an industrial freezer, and as each cold minute ticked by it seemed less and less likely that they were going to be rescued.

"You think Flagg decided to cut us as losses?" Harley asked through her shivering. The two of them were sitting against some boxes that contained various types of meat, not that they had really cared enough to check beyond searching for bodies, and slowly awaiting their deaths.

He felt bad for her really, in here wearing next to nothing. Her little jacket wasn't very warm and he didn't really have anything that he could give her. He tried laying his padding out over her bare legs, but the hard plastic provided absolutely no protection against the cold and required Harley sit with her legs stretched out in front of her, and for conservation purposes she much preferred drawing them to her chest.

So his padding lay discarded off to the side as he considered her question, along with a few of his own.

"Maybe," He admitted before sighing. "Nah, I don't think he'd do that. At the very least Waller would kick his ass over it." He decided and Harley laughed at the point.

They were quiet for another few minutes, but that only gave their thoughts so many places to wander before reaching imminent death. So it wasn't long before Lawton decided that if he was going to die today and next to Harley, then he at least wanted to be able to understand why.

"Can I ask you something?" He all but blurted; she shrugged.

"Don't see why not."

"Why The Joker?" He asked; and that had her turning her head and raising an eyebrow at him in response. "I just mean that I did some time in Arkham back in the day, and I saw the new doctor fresh out of school. Never thought I'd be working jobs with her." He explained and at that Harley looked away, choosing to stare at her feet rather than look him in the eyes.

"What did you see?" She asked, bringing her eyes back to his. "When you looked at that doctor?"

That wasn't the answer Lawton had been expecting, in fact he had actually been thinking she'd slap him upside the head and tell him her love life is none of his damn business; which it isn't. But he did want to know, and so as long as she seemed willing to humor him he searched his mind for an answer.

"To tell the truth, I never really gave much thought to ya." He finally admitted when he couldn't remember any actual opinion he'd had on her back in those day, aside from the musing that she had great legs (which hasn't changed and for now he has no intentions of bringing it up).

She nodded in understanding at the answer, shivering some more as she appeared to gather her thoughts.

"That's because I wasn't worth giving much thought to." She muttered in a voice of broken innocence that was just so unlike Harley it actually worried Lawton.

"Harley-" He started to object but she cut him off with a vicious glare almost as cold as the freezer.

"I mean it," she snapped before shaking away the ferocity of the look, and just like that she went from looking like the most hardened warrior to the smallest little girl Deadshot had ever seen. "I was empty," she stated simply, her voice once again void of its usual bite and charm.

It was rare that anyone got to speak with the girl beneath all the make-up, tattoos, and hair-dye. There were times that Lawton suspected not even Joker knew she was still there, but he did. He had talked to her very briefly on their first mission as a team, when she zoned out on the stairwell and came back to earth by pointing a gun to his head. She asked him if he had ever been in love, and it wasn't the carefree, badass criminal who asked. She was scared, the tears in her eyes warning him he didn't want to know what she had been thinking about. The question was enough for him to figure out it had something to do with Joker, but exactly what he had no idea.

"My life was pathetic." Her words pulled him from his thoughts and he noticed that she had once again become very interested in her feet. "I got up every morning and went to work, went home every night and either ordered Chinese food or heated up some stupid frozen dinner. On Monday's I watched The Bachelor and on Thursday's Grey's Anatomy, and then I went to bed. And the whole cycle started again in the morning." She bitterly explained, though she did let out a laugh when mentioning the television that she used to watch. "I didn't have any friends, I didn't date, I didn't have any social life of any kind. Because I hated who I was." She finished, looking up at him but she must have seen it on his face that the explanation didn't really answer his question, or maybe she secretly wanted to share a little more. "I spent my whole life being the perfect daughter to my parents. Ballet, gymnastics, babysitting, straight A's, yearbook committee, and when I told them I wanted to be a psychiatrist they were thrilled. So thrilled that they never asked me why." She said, and at the look in her eyes Lawton decided that he may not have asked for her life story but he wasn't going to ask her to stop, not when he could see how much she needed to tell it.

"Why?" He asked, somehow this conversation had turned into him humoring her, but that isn't to say he had no interest.

"Because I wanted to hurt people." She deadpanned, "Nothing specific. Rob someone, kill someone, maybe even just do something stupid to disappoint them. It wasn't right, and I thought that if I went to school to be a shrink, maybe I'd figure out what was wrong with me along the way."

"Did you?" Lawton had to ask, but something inside him hated it when the half smile and shake of a head he got in return belonged so clearly to the Joker's girlfriend.

"No," she admitted, "Misdiagnosed myself with half a dozen different disorders, but then I got out into the field and met him, and suddenly everything made sense." He didn't understand what she meant, and he knew that was her intention, so he waited patiently for her to continue. "They say that you should always be true to yourself, but they don't like to acknowledge that not everyone is an angel. He showed me that the things inside of me don't make me a monster, they make me a human." She explained, her voice becoming softer and softer and Lawton honestly couldn't tell if it was the subject of conversation or the cold getting to her, but he would bet his guns that it was both. "I know he's not perfect, not even close." She admitted, rubbing her hands along her arms in a futile effort to get warm. "But he is the only person who ever bothered to see me for who I am."

Floyd was quiet for a minute, letting the words sink in and watching her to make sure that her story was over.

"No," He said once he was sure that there wouldn't be anything more to her confession. "He was just the first."

She looked up at him when he said that, her big doe eyes slightly surprised by the words but he didn't say anything more; not when it wasn't even a second later that he noticed her entire body violently shudder with the cold.

Wordlessly he brought his arms around her and held her close to him, trying to keep her warm and alive.

* * *

Harley passed out not long after their conversation, and Floyd was getting close to that point himself when Digger finally found them. Apparently the rest of the Squad had already finished the mission by that time and so they went straight back to the hole, which was fine by Floyd. The guards took Harley from him and said something about a medical wing he didn't even know they had, but he still demanded Waller let him see her once she woke up. The spawn of Satan acted like she never even heard him and simply had him locked back up in his cell without a word, but after a few hours three guards came to his door and explained that Harley was awake. He told himself that the only reason he demanded to be allowed to see her was because Waller's word couldn't be trust, and while that is true it wasn't the only reason.

Maybe Waller knew that too, because the guards brought him down to the "medical wing", aka a regular cell set up with medical equipment, and allowed him two minutes alone with her (unless you count the cameras of course).

"Aw, you came to check on me?" Harley asked when a guard shoved him in; any traces of the part of her he had seen in the freezer were gone and masked with a smirk and slightly exaggerated Brooklyn accent.

"Just making sure you're still alive Doll-Face," he replied, "Hypothermia while wearing those tights of yours isn't the best combination."

"Yeah, I should've worn my other suit." She mused before flashing her teeth in a wicked grin. "Next time," she promised and he chuckled.

"Get better," he told her, approaching her bed and she nodded with an obeying smile. He then leaned over and kissed the crown of her head before the guards bust in to drag him back to his cell.

He lay awake that night thinking about the freezer, and what Harley had said about her parents. It didn't take a genius to figure out that they only played a small role in shaping her into the empty woman she had been before The Joker. That she turned out the way she did was there fault was only a lie she told herself; she didn't want to admit that it was because she was afraid. She feared the recklessness inside of her, just like he had been horrified when he felt nothing after his first kill. It had taken time, but he eventually came to terms with the fact that killing was just a job for him. For her it hadn't taken time, it had taken a green haired lunatic. As Floyd felt sleep finally falling over him he had one last thought; that maybe one day Harley Quinn would find away to exist without The Joker.

* * *

 **Author's Note: So I kind of based this off of Sara and Leonard in the engine room on Legends of Tomorrow. It's my first shot at anything with Suicide Squad, I hope you guys liked it!**


End file.
